


eight arms of doom

by intrikate88



Series: A Million Ways to Die in the Multiverse [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Families of Choice, Gen, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 10:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12252240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrikate88/pseuds/intrikate88
Summary: One story of many about the Starblaster crew and the particular parts of life that become ordinary over the course of The Stolen Century. Spoilers abound, obv.In Cycle #12, Magnus has a bad time with some calamari. The rest of the crew has a bad time with Magnus.





	eight arms of doom

 Cycle #12

 

 

*  *  *

 

To be fair to everyone: nobody knew that Magnus had an octopus allergy. It was possible that Magnus did not know that Magnus had an octopus allergy. It had never had reason to come up before. So it was definitely, absolutely, _totally_ nobody’s fault. That is the important part.

“…SHIT,” say the twins in unison, looking down at Magnus’s prone body on the floor of the Starblaster’s kitchen. He takes up pretty much the entire galley floor, with one arm flung out and another with his hand clutching at his throat. Red welts had risen up and down his arms and what they can see of his chest, since he’s wearing a muscle tank, but his face is a bit blueish, probably because he’s definitely taken his final breath for the year. 

“You don’t have a breath spell or something, do you?” asks Taako glumly. “Anything that could un-swell his throat?”

“Yeah, it’s too late for that, babe,” Lup responds, equally glum. “We’re gonna have to drag him out of here, that’s going to be a bitch and a half to manage.”

“At least he liked the calamari rings,” Taako says. “I was afraid the seasoning was too spicy—“

“Nah, it really isn’t,” interrupts Lup. “Really, it needs more, I don’t know why you under-seasoned it like you’re new here."

“I mean, I guess the coughing wasn’t because it was too spicy, then, that makes sense.”

The plane they had been on for this cycle was a world mostly ocean, and the peoples in it had a thriving fishing industry in most places. It had taken months to find where the Light of Creation had gone, but eventually it did turn out that there was an entire mer-people society that most people were unaware of and a lot of mermaids and mermen started surfacing, startling the land-dwellers and loudly complaining that some thing with a bright light was disrupting their seasonal tidal harvests, and could whoever dropped this thing come collect it, please. 

They hadn’t been sure that the Starblaster could survive the pressures of a deep-dive even though it technically could be vacuum-sealed, so Barry, Lup, and Taako had worked with Davenport and his knowledge of engineering ships to create a small submarine with an extendable arm and a claw on it. It really was a thing of engineering beauty, and Barry and Davenport had been the ones to retrieve the Light from the mer-people, who wouldn’t touch the thing. Barry didn’t even die in the attempt, which he was really proud of, and they had the Light by month eight, which the rest of them were really proud of, and glad that they could spend the remaining four months a little less anxious than they would have otherwise. 

Now, by the middle of month ten, they had almost thought that they would all make it through the year intact and fly away before the Hunger could do much damage, which was really a primo outcome all around. And then Taako had to yell, “Hey Magnus, come taste these calamari rings, tell me what’s missing,” out the kitchen door.

“Hey, I bet I can catch them in my mouth,” Magnus yelled back, as if they’d ever bet against him on a claim like that. He showed up in the kitchen in gym shorts and a tank top, apparently having been in the middle of exercising. He’d caught a whole bunch of seafood earlier, octopus included, and then spread the word to Barry, Merle, and Lucretia, who had been living in a coastal town nearby trying to bond with the mer-people, that they’d be having a feast tonight. The crab and lobster, Taako and Lup were planning to boil fresh, but they figured they could bread and fry the calamari rings ahead of time, along with filleting the fish. “Okay,” said Magnus, from the far side of the kitchen, “I’m ready, throw ‘em at me.”

The first three he caught with no problem. “Needs salt,” he said, chewing thoughtfully. “And maybe more of a kick?” He coughed. “Man, feels like one got stuck in there, shit." 

“More of a kick coming up,” said Taako, turning back to the breading mixture and reaching for the paprika. Lup sliced more, dropping them as she went along, and Taako scooped them up and into the fryer basket. “Alright, now try these.” 

“Ready when you are!”

Taako didn’t even bother turning around this time, just tossing calamari over his shoulder as Lup kept on slicing, and also pondering which other spices to use. “That’s closer, but not quite—“ Magnus said, then broke off into coughing.

“Well, stop inhaling them!” Taako advised, trying to pick between red pepper flakes and ground black pepper. Magnus stopped coughing, and Taako shook some red pepper flakes into a bowl to grind them more finely. He threw two more calamari rings over his shoulder, not pausing when one hit the floor, but then the second plopped on the floor as well, and he hesitated in grinding the pepper.

A second later, they had heard the thud. 

So now, yes, it was definitely just poor fucking luck that Magnus was allergic to calamari, since clearly he didn’t know. After another minute of staring at his body, Taako becomes aware that there’s food in the fryer, and pulls it out and dumps the burned food into the sink, where it stinks and smokes a bit. 

“What the fuck is this?” says a voice from the doorway. 

“Uh,” says Lup, turning around. “Oh. Hi, Lucretia. It’s exactly what it looks like." 

“Like you murdered Magnus with food?”

“Murder is a harsh word,” protests Taako. “It was an accident, totally not on purpose. But yeah, we _did_ kill Magnus. With the food we made.”

“With the food you wanted to feed us?” asks Davenport, arriving behind Lucretia. 

“If you’re deathly allergic to octopus, shellfish, or…. whatever the fuck this thing is, Magnus, why did you bring this home? Well, now’s the time to speak up,” states Lup. “Also, who wants to move him out of here, because we’re still cooking and it’s unsanitary to have a corpse in the kitchen.” 

“Why is there a corpse in the kitchen? We’re talking fish corpses, right?” comes Merle’s voice from behind the others, and it’s clear he can’t see.

“No, not fish,” says Lucretia. She steps aside to let the actual designated medical support crew member through.

“Aw, _shiiiiiit_ ,” says Merle, designated healer. 

“Can you heal him?” asks Taako. “It’s been like ten minutes. We couldn’t think of any spells that would work.”

Merle checks for a pulse. “Nah, he’s dead as dirt. And if he went down that fast, I doubt there was anything we could have done even if we’d thought of it while he was still alive. Guess we better make a note for future rotations, no octopus for Magnus.”

“I’ll put it in his record,” Lucretia remarks. “Once we’ve… resolved this situation.”

“Let me make sure it was an allergy, first,” says Merle, grabbing a few of the unburnt calamari rings. He pops them into his mouth. “I got a dwarf constitution, should either be fine or give you enough time to come up with something—“ Merle suddenly stops, his mouth moving but no sound coming out, and he puts a hand to his throat. 

“Shitfuck!” says Taako, fumbling to cast some sort of breathing spell, anything he could recall to memory. 

“Hah! Got you!” Merle chortles. No one laughs. “Oh, come on, guys."

“ _Fuck’s_ sake, Merle,” Lucretia says, rubbing her eyes.

Footsteps sounded on the deck, coming inside. “Did I miss anything? I got stuck on a problem and left late,” Barry said breathlessly (but not as breathlessly as others in the room) as he arrived. “Has— oh.”

“You missed a couple things, but not dinner,” Lup tells Barry. “Okay, seriously though, someone move him out of my kitchen. Somebody whose hands aren’t going to be cooking food we eat, specifically.”

In the end, Barry carries Magnus’s body out by the arms, while Merle and Davenport get his legs. They take him out to the deck, in the fresh salt sea air, and then pull a tarp over the body, to deter curious seagulls. 

When Magnus had died on the first world, they were outrunning the Hunger and there was no time for anything. On the mushroom world, when he was killed by a fungal infection, they hadn’t had time for a formal ceremony of any kind, just barely enough time to put his body into a shallow grave, stripping it of all useful gear first. Other cycles, other crew members who had died had been subject to similar treatment. So much about it just didn’t seem real; sure, Magnus was super dead, but in two months, he wouldn’t be. 

The remaining six of them reassemble in the kitchen. “I don’t see why this should change our plans, we just have one less giant mouth to feed, so that’s more crab legs and dip for the rest of us,” Lup is arguing when they’re all back. 

“Magnus would want us to!” Taako adds in support. “Plus, this boil I’ve got for the lobsters isn’t something I really want to do in an enclosed space, my plan was to do it out on the deck."

“The weather’s so nice out, we could fly out from land a little, have a cookout on deck and a burial at sea,” Barry suggests. “I brought wine and yes Lup before you ask I made sure it was a wine that would complement the food.”

So that’s what they do. On the top deck of the ship, Lucretia removes all things of value from Magnus’s body while Davenport gets the sheets off Magnus’s bunk to wrap him in. Barry takes his boots. 

The shellfish is boiled up on deck, but Lup and Taako bring up bowls of fried, and now correctly seasoned, calamari, and plates of sushi, to snack on as the lobster and crab are prepared. Lup pops the cork out of the wine bottle, splashing some into each person’s glass. “It’s nice to have the time to actually toast someone’s departure,” Lucretia says. 

Merle and Barry are the ones to haul the body overboard, but they all watch as it falls and falls before disappearing into the waves far below. Nobody says any kind of eulogy; they hadn’t really before, when any of them beefed it, but also, it was becoming harder and harder to not see each other as a permanent fixture, unchanging and stable as their annual cycle. There was no need to say goodbye when the world gave you an infinite supply of see-you-laters.

As the sun sets on the pile of empty crab shells on the table, Barry breathes a sigh of contentment. “This is nice,” he says, and pours himself another glass of wine. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I was listening through Stolen Century roughly around the same time I started watching Awful Squad, which for those of you who aren't familiar is a Polygon production on YouTube where several of the Polygon staff, including Griffin and Justin (and often Travis even though he doesn't work there) play Player Unknown Battlegrounds usually pretty badly and manage to find new and interesting ways to get killed in the game. What follows is often a cry for the others to loot their body, avenge their death, or a dead Justin will pull out a guitar and start playing some rather singular cover songs (as his still-living teammates scream about how the distraction is the reason they're definitely going to die.)  
> I don't think it takes a genius to see where I'm going with this.  
> After the first few years of living, dying, searching for the Light of Creation, escaping the Hunger, rinse and repeat, I'm sure the IPRE crew found themselves in a similar position, just perhaps without Taako screeching Kelly Clarkson covers on an acoustic guitar. Or maybe there was some of that, I don't know, find that cover of Avril Lavigne's "Boyfriend" that Justin did and tell me Taako wouldn't totally do exactly that, you can't.


End file.
